It would be interesting to see what is he doing with the BTC stolen from legit miners.Is he selling already?

Nothing was stolen from legit miners.

A lot was stolen from miners in 2 ways:1) seizing a big percentage of the BTC created (which otherwise would have be gone to legit miners)2) Increasing the difficulty, so reducing the rate at which legit miners gain

Now can you see the light?

1) They are providing valid hashes, so their blocks are legit. Not even a bit less legit than anyone else.2) They aren't ignoring other blocks so they help securing the blockchain.3) You don't know if it's a botnet or any other mining method like ASIC/GPU farm. And even if it's a botnet, it's still not stealing anything from miners.

May be you think that GPU owners steal BTCs from CPU miners ? Or may be people with stolen/cheap power are stealing BTC from US/California miners ?

1) They are providing valid hashes, so their blocks are legit. Not even a bit less legit than anyone else.2) They aren't ignoring other blocks so they help securing the blockchain.3) You don't know if it's a botnet or any other mining method like ASIC/GPU farm. And even if it's a botnet, it's still not stealing anything from miners.

May be you think that GPU owners steal BTCs from CPU miners ? Or may be people with stolen/cheap power are stealing BTC from US/California miners ?

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

1) They are providing valid hashes, so their blocks are legit. Not even a bit less legit than anyone else.2) They aren't ignoring other blocks so they help securing the blockchain.3) You don't know if it's a botnet or any other mining method like ASIC/GPU farm. And even if it's a botnet, it's still not stealing anything from miners.

May be you think that GPU owners steal BTCs from CPU miners ? Or may be people with stolen/cheap power are stealing BTC from US/California miners ?

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

Hashes are supposed to be less than specific value defined by current difficulty.

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

Assume the botnet operator would pay the owners of his bots. Would you, as a miner, still feel like you are being stolen from?As deepbit said, its only the owners of the machines that are getting robbed. For miners it would make no difference if the botnet operator rather than stealing computer resources, instead robbed a bank and bought a warehouse full of FPGAs with his loot. Or he actually bought it from his saving account. Makes no difference - except for the bank.

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

You pay a fee. If the fee is high enough then a miner includes the tx.You have no right to have a tx in a block.

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

Assume the botnet operator would pay the owners of his bots. Would you, as a miner, still feel like you are being stolen from?

Yes. If someone is committing a crime to get an advantage over me I do. It is quite different then being beaten by an ASIC that someone spent $500k on.

The difference between this miner and other miners, is that this miner is a parasite. It's not providing any services, but reaps the rewards. Whereas other miners are more like a symbiosis, they give and get. It's mutually beneficial.

Pools like DeepBit are in symbiosis with miners, if DeepBit stopped giving rewards, how long do you think it would last?

I agree that miners should be able to set tx fees, but they should be able to mine only containing tx that match their fees, but no empty blocks.

1) are not hashes supposed to include transactions? If they don't, I see a kind of faking work.For the rest, I stay with my case.Legit miners are those who invest to produce useful proper output. The others are not.

You pay a fee. If the fee is high enough then a miner includes the tx.You have no right to have a tx in a block.

Where all of your nonsense breaks down is that there is no possible fee that would get this guy to include your transaction because he isn't even looking at transactions.

I'd be willing to bet $100 of my own real money that this is a botnet. The evidence so far points seriously towards a botnet that operates by distributing only the bare minimum of information (the previous block's hash) to the nodes, which then generate a valid block themselves and try hashes. If anyone can provide convincing proof that this is something else, I will mail the first person to do so a check or send them the equivalent in BTC.

The difference between this miner and other miners, is that this miner is a parasite. It's not providing any services, but reaps the rewards.

First a service is provided. It adds nearly 15% hashing power to the network. The network is harder to attack at 11.5 TH/s vs 10.0 TH/s.

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I agree that miners should be able to set tx fees, but they should be able to mine only containing tx that match their fees, but no empty blocks.

Those two statements are mutually exclusive.

How do you know the "mystery" miner isn't doing that. It just happens to be his fee threshold is 100 BTC.

More realisticly say I wanted to only include tx which have a fee of 0.01 BTC or more. Most blocks would have no tx. How do you reconcile the statements a miner should be able to set fee BUT not include empty blocks? What if no tx match the desired fee?

Where all of your nonsense breaks down is that there is no possible fee that would get this guy to include your transaction because he isn't even looking at transactions.

How do you know? Have you tried?

A more practical example is that in the near future I will be only including tx w/ fee of 0.01 BTC. Now about 90% of blocks will be empty (looking at past record of tx). Do you think I shouldn't be allowed to do that?

What if "mystery" simply has an unrealistic min fee (say 100 BTC per tx)? Is he not allowed to do that.

It comes down to:Do miners have the right to set the min fee for tx they will include in the next block?If no then I will fight any proposal you try to cram down the throats of miners. If yes then that will lead to genuine empty blocks. How do you penalize "bad" empty blocks from blocks which are empty simply because users are cheap?

I'd be willing to bet $100 of my own real money that this is a botnet. The evidence so far points seriously towards a botnet that operates by distributing only the bare minimum of information (the previous block's hash) to the nodes, which then generate a valid block themselves and try hashes. If anyone can provide convincing proof that this is something else, I will mail the first person to do so a check or send them the equivalent in BTC.[/quote]

First a service is provided. It adds nearly 15% hashing power to the network. The network is harder to attack at 11.5 TH/s vs 10.0 TH/s.

As long as it excludes transactions it's meaningless. In case of 51% attack, it will be an unwilling (or willing) ally to the attacker.

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I agree that miners should be able to set tx fees, but they should be able to mine only containing tx that match their fees, but no empty blocks.

Those two statements are mutually exclusive.

No, depends how it is implemented.

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How do you know the "mystery" miner isn't doing that. It just happens to be his fee threshold is 100 BTC.

More realisticly say I wanted to only include tx which have a fee of 0.01 BTC or more. Most blocks would have no tx. How do you reconcile the statements a miner should be able to set fee BUT not include empty blocks? What if no tx match the desired fee?

No blocks are mined until a match is found. Then a miner with 100 BTC fee, would be able to provide his "quality" service, without hampering the flow (event if it's insignificant at this moment). This way there will be competition among high fee miners and low fee miners, without the high fee miners going on strike and milking the network at the same time.

No blocks are mined until a match is found. Then a miner with 100 BTC fee, would be able to provide his "quality" service, without hampering the flow (event if it's insignificant at this moment). This way there will be competition among high fee miners and low fee miners, without the high fee miners going on strike and milking the network at the same time.

Forget that. You do understand the logical end game is that miners have no pricing power (they already have very little).

You can set your prices but if nobody agrees to them then you lose the potential block reward. Thus the one is forced to accept free & no fee tx and clients would be stupid to ever pay a fee (or more than a token fee).

Also not sure if you see the logical fail in your "proposal".I set my fee to 100 BTC. I send a tx w/ 100 BTC to myself and include it in my block. Tada that block is now valid right? I never mine any tx except my own. Kinda bypasses any security such an asinine protocol rule would create.

What is the highest tx fee this miner has rejected? What tx fee would he need to reject to be an 'attacker'?

It's likely he rejects all transactions. Reasoning being: he's rejecting because of some restraints he's working under. If he had the tech in place and it wouldn't harm his operation in any way, I'm sure he would include transactions.

It's likely he rejects all transactions. Reasoning being: he's rejecting because of some restraints he's working under. If he had the tech in place and it wouldn't harm his operation in any way, I'm sure he would include transactions.

This is exactly the reason that this particular problem needs stronger solutions than simply waiting for tx fees to rise. He could be under such restraints that the security of his whole operation is threatened if he starts adding transactions. There is a possibility that he truly doesn't have any threshold where he starts giving a shit about transactions if the technological solution to include transactions in general is too disruptive for his operation.

I'd be willing to bet $100 of my own real money that this is a botnet.

I'd think so too, but during the height of the 2011 Bitcoin hype there were several mining botnets. This was extensively reported by AV blogs and tech news outlets. There was also a rush of infected power users joining this forum asking what was going on. The Magical Mystery Miner appears to have more power than any of the unidentified miners that turned out to be botnets last time, but MM have managed to stay completely under the radar...

I'd be willing to bet $100 of my own real money that this is a botnet.

I'd think so too, but during the height of the 2011 Bitcoin hype there were several mining botnets. This was extensively reported by AV blogs and tech news outlets. There was also a rush of infected power users joining this forum asking what was going on. The Magical Mystery Miner appears to have more power than any of the unidentified miners that turned out to be botnets last time, but MM have managed to stay completely under the radar...

By harnessing only a portion of the GPU and doing nothing else on that p0wned computer other then 1/4 or so power mining they stay under the radar. No big fan noise. Email messages and irc control channel use are usually what gets a bot noticed and so you do not use those. Only finished work is reported with MAYBE a heartbeat every few hours. The computer could monitor any number of websites for new work. With a good cash cow computer you keep it unnoticed and under the radar. Greed looses you that machine.